Shadowmen
by CourtJester
Summary: AU - In a not-too-distant future, Tony Stark is asked by Sky King Odin to track down Loki, a notorious criminal and the last Technomage. Tony soon discovers he is in way over his head. Eventual FrostIron. [ON HIATUS]
1. The OneEyed King and the Joker

A/N: (Re-posting. Special thanks to Lizzy for coming through with the backup here!) This is very AU, and updates will be sporadic. But enjoy!

**"Shadowmen"**

**Prologue: Floaters and Dwellers**

In Central City, there's the Sky and there's the Ground, and either you're a Floater or you're a Dweller.

There's no middle ground.

Oh, there's some middle-class high-rise dwellers who think they're Floaters just because they have a flat on the eighty-fifth floor, but really they're just guilty of pretentious douchebaggery. Everybody knows you aren't a Floater until you can _buy_ the eighty-fifth floor. And the eighty-sixth. And the eighty-seventh.

In Central City, you're either a Floater or you're a Dweller.

You're either one of the lucky few in the sky, high up above the smog-haze and working masses, or you're on the ground, down in the choking streets where all the regular lunchpail types rub elbows with the scum and scabs and buzz-heads and shufflers and shifters.

No two ways around it.

Laws are written in the sky towers; they're followed on the ground, and Goodman help the idiot who dares to break those laws because there is _no_ justice like Sky justice.

But that's the way it is.

In Central City, you're either a Floater or you're a Dweller.

xXx

**1. The One-Eyed King and the Joker**

Up in the sky, they call Odin "The All-Father."

Kind of a haw-haw joke, except it's the kind you only laugh at when the doors are closed and you're sure-sure that great big eye isn't watching you.

You never insult the Sky King to his face.

(Unless your name is Tony Stark, anyway, but, since Tony's maybe the second-most powerful guy in the sky with all his techno-baubles and weapons that can wipe _existence_ out of existence, and since he's richer and more powerful than all the king's horses and all the king's men, well, that doesn't really count.)

You never insult the Sky King to his face.

He's not even really a king, more like a king_pin. _He's the guy with the most money and the furthest reach on the entire planet_, _so people treat him like royalty because woe unto the the man who is stupid enough not to.

His son Thor, all six-and-a-half hulking blond feet of him, swings a _mean_ hammer for his daddy's tender honor, and the big guy seems to relish his job.

Tony's been at the wrong end of that big-ugly more than once and it has left a mark every time.

So maybe even he makes an effort to mind his p's and q's when the king rings. A half-hearted effort, but it's more than he bothers for anyone else. His mouth's a dog he doesn't bother leashing. Sometimes it stays, sometimes it strays, sometimes it just runs away. He never knows which way it's going to go.

That's half the fun.

Odin's a holograph-man in the middle of Tony's table right now, a gold-haloed image on a throne made of nothing more than circuits and titanium and neon-blue lights. Craggy-faced and weathered, the old man gives the appearance of age, but his blue-blue eye burns like a pilot light primed to run forever.

Silver patch over the other eye, some kind of symbol welded on it in gold and diamonds. Talisman, superstition, logo – Tony's never really known which.

He kicks his feet up on the table, workrboots and all, and folds his hands together over his arc-reactored chest. Feels the comforting buzz-hum under his fingers. Says, benign smile in place, "Odin." _All-Father. _"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Lift of a white eyebrow. Highest of high definition displays here, this holo. Spare no expense to see every twitch of an eyelid, every muscle bunch and jump, every tic and hitch. Odin doesn't give him anything beyond the eyebrow. Sky King says, his voice crystal clear over the distance, "Good afternoon, Stark. I trust I am not disturbing you."

Highest of high definition here: every speck of dirt under Tony's fingernails visible, every smear of grease in the creases of his hands, every smudge on his pants in vivid living color.

"No, sir," he says. "I'm in my workshop."

"Crafting the next great piece of StarkTech, no doubt."

Fiddling with an old Skimmer engine, more like, but Tony shrugs anyway. "Sure. Let's go with that. How are you?"

"I am well. And yourself?"

"Just ducky. I assume this isn't a social call, so what's say we skip the small talk and get down to it?"

Curved knife of a smile, half-hidden beneath layers of white beard, but no less obvious. It's the kind of smile anybody who's crossed the old man has probably seen just before they've felt a blade slice through their skin. Here, it's a warning that the ice is getting mighty thin.

"You assume correctly," Odin finally says. "I have personal business with you. Your ears only."

"Mine are the only ears in my tower," Tony says. They usually are. "Look, if this is about that thing with Thor last week, I swear it was just an accident. If he hadn't-"

"It is not," Odin overrides him, thunder-voiced. "My son was perhaps overzealous. He has a temper, as you well know, and does not always have the sense to reign it in. You were within rights to do as you did. That is the last I will say on this matter."

"Fair enough." Bad job of an apology, but Tony'll take it. Not apt to get much else out of old gold-and-white here. ""So. Personal business."

"Yes. This matter requires delicate handling, and the utmost secrecy. I'd ask you not to ask questions. Just simply listen."

"I can do that." In theory.

"Two weeks ago, a criminal escaped from a prison facility in the Siberian wastelands. Loki. He is – vile. A thief, a murderer, a liar. He is called Silvertongue. He is called Liesmith. He is called Trickster. He is chaos incarnate, and he must not be allowed to roam freely."

Thumb-drum on Tony's chest, a steady rhythm, tap-tap, keeping time, keeping rhythm, keeping count. He was always best at numbers, calculating. "Law's got access to the vid grid. You saw to that yourself. They probably already have eyes out."

"They do, but they do not have the _level _of access you do. Nor, I believe, do they yet have the same technological capabilities as you do."

"You mean the facial rec software." More StarkTech. He shakes his head. "No, that's not live yet. It's still touchy. Too many false-positives." Something iffy in the algorithm. A built-in flaw. It's a difficult fix for anybody not named Tony Stark, but he's not in any hurry to hand the patch over to the Law.

Odin, all-seeing, all-knowing, _All-Father_, isn't fooled. "If you'll agree to help me, I'll overlook your failure to produce the fix. The Law needn't be troubled."

"That sounds like a threat. I don't do those."

"Merely incentive." Chin-lift, and a single blue eye issuing a challenge down a rock-slab nose. "Would your software be able to detect a Shifter?"

"He's a Shadowman?"

Shifters, Shadowmen, Cloakers – the boogeymen hiding in daylight, never the same face in the same place two days running. Masters of disguise, able to commit their crimes and leave no one the wiser for it.

"He is a Technomage, actually." Odin drops that fact just-discussing-the-weather-casual, as if it is nothing of consequence. "One who, as it happens, is also a trained Shfiter. _Can_ your software detect that?"

"I can program it to look for bone structure if you can get me a detailed sample image." An absent answer. His mind is elsewhere. "I thought you wiped them all out. The Technomages."

The Purge of the Scourge. He'd been a kid at the time, maybe six years old, but the old man, daddy dearest, had been a saber-shaker for the pro-'Mage crowd. It put him at odds with Odin's anti-'Mage warriors, but Howard Stark had never been one to stand for the destruction of technological potential.

Technomages were hated and loved and feared and revered in every corner of the world.

They were the world's technological artists, able to bend and shape electromagnetic and electrokinetic energies in ways that technological architects like Howard Stark could only dream about.

At the end of the last war, all the atom-splitters – the big bombs the architects built – they punched holes in the atmo, they tore the sky wide open, they almost glassed the damn planet. The 'Mages built machines and shaped the energies to patch the broken sky, to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

But in return, they wanted to rule.

They wanted absolute, rigid control.

They would turn the world into a shining city on the hill, in exchange for absolute obeisance. Unlimited technology in exchange for the bended knee. The promise of utopia in exchange for freemen becoming nothing more than hands to haul circuit boards and backs to bear transistors. No longer would a non-'Mage be allowed to dabble in science. No longer would a non-'Mage be allowed the luxury of ideas.

Not even pro-'Mage saber-shakers like Howard Stark could stand for it.

So 'Mages became the Scourge, and there was the Purge, lead by the Sky King himself. And in the end, the vastly-outnumbered Technomages were wiped out and civilization was allowed to dust off its mighty shoulders and rise again.

Odin, now some thirty years older, careworn and weatherbeaten, squares his shoulders. "Loki is the last," he says. "I allowed a small sect to survive the Purge. I thought they would be of some use to me, but I was mistaken. They became consumed by their need for revenge. It drove them quite mad, and in the end I had no choice but to destroy them.

"Loki and his father Laufey, the leader of the Technomage sect, escaped in the confusion. Some months later, they broke into my home. They murdered all the guards in my house, and then left. Two nights later, despite heightened security, Loki managed to reach my wife. Through the wires, he whispered poisoned words into her ear until she attempted to end her own life. Thor reached her in time, but it was a near thing.

"For months this went on. We would relocate, but despite our best efforts, Loki and Laufey would find us and wreak some hideous torment on us. They murdered our servants. They shut down all of our house tech. They blocked our communications. They projected their voices through the wires.

"It ended suddenly and unexpectedly.

"Loki and Laufey appeared in our midst one evening. Laufey, evidently tired of the games, had decided to kill us and have done. Loki slew him and surrendered. He appealed not to me, but to Thor for mercy. He claimed to have been controlled by Laufey, and he was convincing. Thor entreated upon me to imprison him and bind his 'Mage gifts rather than execute him.

"That was my mistake.

"Since Loki has escaped, there have already been a number of thefts at my residence. Voices in the air, whispering at my wife. And I have no doubt my personal channels are compromised. That is why I am borrowing Mr. Fury's."

The old man stops there, and, man, he's pulled tight. Ten guys playing five-on-a-side tug 'o war couldn't get a rope to stretch tighter.

Tony hmms. Strange story, and something about it makes him feel twitchy-restless, like he's got this itch behind his eyes. Lies do that to him every time. "I see," he says at last. "Wondered about that."

He hadn't really, hadn't even noticed, but if the Sky King can lie, why can't Tony?

"All right," he says. "So I help you find this guy. What's in it for me?"

"I won't mention your software."

"They come after me, I'll just fuck it up all over again. What else you got?"

"What do you want?"

"A favor. Something to put in my back pocket. Rainy day thing."

"You wish a future claim." Odin says the words slow, like he's processing them, like they're drawing too much current on his circuits.

"Yeah. That. Deal?"

"That is acceptable _if_ you will allow me to send Thor to assist you."

"No can do, chief. Nobody but me touches the software."

Whipcrack of irritation: snow-white eyebrow slashing down over the good eye. "I meant in actually_ capturing_ him, Stark. You will need all the help you can get."

"Oh, I have help." Two of the best street-spies around, for starters. And a metal suit, sharp as sharp gets in its reds and golds, all kitted out with the latest and greatest in StarkTech weaponry. "But, whatever, send him over. One more set of eyes won't hurt. But I need those images. And whatever other info you have. Aliases, any known Shifter faces, things like that."

"Fury is sending the file as we speak."

"Receiving file," JARVIS pipes up, ever-so-helpfully.

"Thanks," Tony mutters. Wipes his greasy-grimies on his jeans, sits forward. "So's that it?"

"One last thing," Odin says. "Do not mention that Loki is a Technomage. Otherwise, I appreciate your assistance with this, Stark. As I said, I will send Thor to you this evening, and I will be in touch with you on the morrow."

"Can't wait." _Dance, monkey_.

The vid feed terminates, and not a second too soon.

Because, wow, that's just a whole _box_ full of weird, and it's going to take him some time to unpack it.

"Transfer complete, sir," JARVIS says. "Loading image."

"Go ahead and do the wire-frame while you're at it. Load the facial rec software, hack the grid, apply the patch – you know." He waves a hand. "Do your thing. Show me what this guy looks like."

"Yes, sir."

Just a head this time, mapping slowly into the air.

But _man._

The eyes, that's the first thing Tony sees. Sharp green eyes, gold-flecked and cool as icebergs, staring out of a face that's carved alabaster marble, all clean lines and lean planes and cheekbones for _days_. Full mouth that's just made for smirking. Slicked black hair is a fit frame for that striking picture.

Mischief written in every line of this guy's face, secret amusements hidden in the upward quirk of his lips, and, yeah, he is trouble with a capital T.

"...hoboy," Tony says through a sigh.

"Indeed, sir," JARVIS says dryly.

xXx

If you want proof that industry is just a big machine, look no further than Stark Industries.

The world's largest supplier of tech – weapons, med tech, vid tech, you name it – has exactly one human employee: Mr. Anthony Edward Stark, CEO, COO, CFO, one bad mofo.

The rest of the company is run by machines.

Machines to build machines. Machines to calculate profit and loss. Machines to oversee the budgets.

Automated, automatic, self-sustaining. Twenty-four hours of production a day, every day, non-stop, and good lord how the money rolls in.

Oh, once upon a when, there were maybe fifty thousand human worker-bees, but those were the golden-dozy halcyon days, back before Tony learned what real grief was. Those were the Pepper days, when everything was easy-breezy and she was his sweet love and she took care of all the hum-drum crap-trap that came with running a company.

But these are the post-Pepper days, and now that she's gone he doesn't have to pretend he's a humanitarian, doesn't have to act like he has a heart.

Everything is machines, and it's a hell of a lot cleaner that way.

Easier, too: because he has built his empire on cogs and sprockets, everything keeps running even if he's off for weeks at a time chasing boogeymen.

And behind it all, there's JARVIS: babysitter, caretaker, nursemaid, companion all in rolled into one bodiless pain in the ass. Tony's best creation: a fully-functioning, fully-reasoning AI.

If Tony is the man behind the Stark Industries machine, then JARVIS is the machine behind the man. It's a weird kind of symbiosis, and it's probably not healthy, but it works.

It works just fine.

"Load that image onto one of the portables," Tony says, rising, stretching stiff muscles. "Make sure we have a room ready for our guest. I'm going out for a bit, but I'll be back. Get the Skimmer ready."

"You'll not be driving, sir, I hope?" his AI asks.

Tony tosses the rag aside. "Course I'm driving. What the hell kind of question is that?"

"May I remind you, sir, that your last outing cost you close to a million-"

"Hey! I was drunk that time, so it doesn't count."

"Is the fact that you were driving inebriated supposed to excuse the fact that you ran into a building, sir?"

"JARVIS, I think the real question is why you let me drive inebriated in the first place," Tony shoots back. "You're supposed to be the responsible one here."

"_Let you_?" For having no emotions programmed into him, JARVIS manages to sound outraged, like his circuits are about to start sparking. It's a thing of beauty. "You overrode the lockout, sir. How can I be responsible when you override my ability to override your more irresponsible impulses?"

"I dunno," Tony says dubiously. He heads for the door. "Sounds a lot like an excuse to me. And I'm not drinking tonight, by the way, so you can relax. I'm just running down to visit the Wonder Twins in Scumville. I won't be gone long. Let me know if anything comes up. Shut everything down for me, and then run a diagnostic on yourself. You're prickly tonight."

"Yes, sir." Measured and even tone, no hint of offense, not that there could be, but Tony doesn't doubt there's gonna be _some_ kind of unpleasant in store for him later.

JARVIS is a sneaky bastard.

And Tony wouldn't have it any other way.

xXx

Tony always experiences a moment of vertigo when he descends from his Sky tower.

Downtown in Central City.

Dusk-ish, and man, the neon is _everywhere_. Violent purples and blues and greens and reds shrieking for attention through the smog-fog, signs – _Free Buffet! Live Nudes! Register inside to win a free Immerser! _– flicker-flashing like strobe-lights inside a club, vid walls playing the infotainment of the day, ad scanners popping up every three feet.

Buildings reach up like long fingers pointing up into an impossible infinity: high-rises, Sky-rises, towers, and bowers. People stacked on top of people inside, knick-knacks on a shelf with only a thin divider between them.

But that's how it is in this crowded city.

Everywhere is a jumble of motion: sidedwalks packed six-deep with neon-lit peds hustling hither and yon like blades of grass swept up in a breeze, Skmmers and Swimmers shooting through the jetways between high-rises, ground carriages grumbling and rumbling over the roads.

And it's _noisy: _horns and voices and music and it's just a wash of sound, this roaring _aaaaaaaaaah_ like standing beside an enormous waterfall.

Tony's come to prefer the relative quiet in the Sky, but he finds himself able to slot into the noise and hustle-bustle just fine.

Off the main drag, well away from the neon crush, away from faux-clean buildings and faux-clean people, that's when the facade starts to chip away.

Buildings begin to look more and more unkempt.

So do the people.

Walking from the fringes of civilization into the heart of the slums is like watching the various stages of drug addiction: not so bad at first, still under control, but maybe a little rough around the edges – buildings are still respectable but a little unkempt. A few blocks later, buildings are colored with a violent rainbow of graffiti, windows are shuttered, doors are chained and bolted and maybe here and there are bullet holes and the odd busted-out window. Closer still, and, yeah, now it's full-blown, no-going-back addiction: abandoned tenement buildings squat rotting, buzz-heads and scabs crouched rat-like in doorways with needle marks marching up their veins, gunshots popping like a kid snapping bubblegum. Big empty windows like the vacant eyes all around. Guns in every hand, drugs in every pocket, hopeless eyes all around watching and watching and watching.

Tony's not wearing his full armor, just a thin, bullet-proof bodysuit under jeans and a tee shirt and a scuffled leather coat. He hasn't shaved in days and he didn't bother to comb his hair after his shower.

It's not perfect, but he doesn't look that out of place.

If he'd tried to drive down here, he'd be toast. But it's not far.

Down in the pit with the rest of the human scum.

Half a block ahead, there's a guy, not over-tall, dressed in baggy black pants and a hoodie that disguises what Tony knows is a muscular physique. He's leaning against a droopy old tree that is somehow still living in front of husked-out shell of a building. A ragged quiver of arrows peeks over one shoulder of the guy's shoulder and a bow criss-crosses the quiver strap on his chest. He's not _clean_, but he's clear-eyed. _Sharp_-eyed.

Hawk-eyed.

"Hey, hey!" he calls, grinning, as Tony approaches. "What the hell are you doing down here?"

"Just out for a walk," Tony replies, shrugging. "Your gal around? I need you guys."

Clint blinks, quick-flick of eyelids. "She's working."

"On her back?" Tony can't help asking. Winding Barton up is a hobby.

"Fuck you." Which is Clint-speak for yes. "She won't be back for a couple hours."

Tony considers that.

Somewhere up above is the clip-clap from an old Rattletrap Skimmer caught in the jetty. Happens sometimes, those old models. They skim the rim of the jetstream instead of cutting through it like the Swimmers. Skimmers are faster, even the old ones, but they get stuck sometimes, stall out.

"Fucking Skimmers," Clint mutters.

Tony glares. "Fuck you. That's vintage."

Wash of exhaust sweep-sways through the avenue, cutting curlicues through the paper refuse. The pocky pavement groans, all achy and tired from feet and wheels climbing all over it. Steam blows from vents like dragon-breath, and the air becomes dust-choked and sticky.

Tony coughs into his fist. Winces at the grind against his arc-reactor. "How the fuck do you stand it down here?" he asks.

For like the millionth time.

Barton's shrug is herky-jerky. "Life on the ave, man. Not all of us can have the Sky."

"I have a hundred empty rooms in my tower. Plenty of room for you and all your compadres."

"Nah. I'll scuzz around down here with the buzz-heads any day if it keeps us off the grid. Besides," he adds, like they don't have this discussion every time Tony comes down here, "we're working down here." All at once, he goes still, eagle eyes locking onto some target across the way.

All Tony sees is a blur through the brown dust-haze.

Cat-silent, an arrow slides from the rag-tag quiver. Expert hands load the bow and draw and release in a move that is as seamless as seamless gets. The arrow makes the faintest _fwmp_ when it takes to the sky.

"_Holy fuck me_!" a scared-raspy voice yelps just down the way.

A rail-skinny little shit with the twitchy face of a rat, all pointy-nosed and shift-eyed, emerges. The arrow's feathers stand tall and proud and upright in the shaft like some kind of goddamn flag on a flagpole. The arrow's head is a red-gleaming triangle. Fucking thing went straight through the guy's hand.

Barton reaches over and yanks the arrow out, ignoring the guy's pain-screams. "I told you, Littlejohn," he dog-snaps at the guy. "I told you if I saw you around here again I'd get you."

Littlejohn's ripped lips pull back into a wide pain-grin. His teeth are mossy tombstones lined up cockeyed in a yawning cemetery mouth. Death in a breath. "Please, man. _Please_. I gotta have some more. I'll do anything, man. _Anything_."

Buzz-head. Freaker. Junker. Addict. Dead man walking.

Tony chews a thumbnail.

"I need it," Littlejohn whimpers. Like he'd fall to his knees if Clint asked him to.

"Like fuck you do, hooker," Barton rumble-grumbles. Not looking anywhere but at Littlejohn. "I already comped you two quarters, and I let you short me for the two before that. Dry up and tumble off, you fucking weed." Nimble fingers reload the bloody arrow. "Or maybe the next one goes in your balls."

"No!" the little man yips. "No. Shit sakes, I'm gone. I'm gone!"

And he takes to his heels.

Tony, all raised eyebrows and thinned lips says, "I have a hundred empty rooms in my tower."

Clint's grin is all teeth. No moss on those chompers. Sharks would be jealous. "Don't sweat me, brother-man. I'm rolling. Just gotta pop a few pimples sometimes. No big deal."

"Yeah, thanks for that." Tony hasn't eaten in about a day. Good thing. The air smells like dirt and piss. "You're dealing now? Do I even need to tell you what a bad idea that is?"

"I'm not _doing_, am I? No. So climb down off my back. Or at least give me a reach around."

"My tits aren't big enough for you."

A door moans open just behind them and vomits out a couple of skinny buzz-headed women, all weavy-wavy as they stammer in diagonals across the street.

_Fucking slums_.

Clint sniffs, uneasy. "So you got a job? That why you're here?"

"You think I'm just down here because I want your company, man?" Tony shoots back, all slum swagger. He reaches into his jacket's pocket and pulls out the portable. "Yeah. It's a job. It's hot. As in Odin."

"Oh, man." Clint takes the portable, eyes it like it's poison. "You gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

"Nope. He's looking for this guy here. Everything you need to know is in that file. FYI, he's a tech guy, so he'll know to avoid the grid. I'm guessing he'll be holed up in a scuzz pit somewhere."

That would be why he wants Clint and Tasha on this: there are areas in this city even the vid grid doesn't cover. These two are the unrivaled masters at flushing out game hidden in the slums' various nooks and crannies. They're like bloodhounds.

Hawk's gaze is intent, calm, sober. "We'll get on this as soon as she gets back. This a flush and fetch, or just a find?"

"For now, just find him. Odin's sending Thor my way. To help catch him."

"...huh. So, yeah. Big fuckin' deal, huh?"

Tony nods. Stuffs his hands in his pockets when he hears a bang-bang roll down the block. Winces at the screaming. "Listen," he says, "I have to get back. Thor should be getting there soon."

"You're a pussy, Stark."

"Yup. Big sloppy wet one." Flat grin, humorless and unamused. "Come to the tower for lunch tomorrow. Bring Tasha. I'm gonna bring Steve and Bruce in."

"You think?"

"Might as well." Tony turns on his heel and begins to hike back, but pauses as a thought strikes him. "Don't ever insult Skimmers in my hearing again. My dad invented them."

Another toothy grin, and, "I know, man."

"Fuck you very much. Noon tomorrow. Don't be late."

"Gotcha. Later, pussy."

Tony doesn't rise to the bait.

On his way back to his Skimmer (and the way back to his tower, and later, even, after JARVIS doesn't find anything and while Thor's drinking his ass under the table), he thinks about gold-flecked green eyes and a pale face and the way the dark hair frames it all just right.

xXx

A/N: I spun this entire story out of the phrase "clip-clap from an old Rattletrap." I am not even kidding. Updates for this will be sporadic.


	2. A Royal Flush

A/N: Lot of exposition, world-building, and character-establishing here. Enjoy.

**2. A Royal Flush**

The thing is, Tony drinks to forget her.

Mostly to forget her.

Not that he can.

But sometimes, once in a while, he drinks to remember:

The night they spun and swayed, cheek-to-cheek, drunk and clumsy and young and careless, under that low-slung June moon, full and sun-bright. Her hair was copper fire, painless, as it threaded through his fingers, and she was supple in his arms, her laughter floating up like bubbles in champagne.

Time stretched out ahead of them like a road that faded off into an endless horizon.

And, oh, how they'd danced.

He'd been on the verge of his emergence, on the very cusp of his rising, on the last leg on his journey from prodigal to powerhouse.

The next morning, he'd taken his dreams onto the jetstream, had Skimmed away to deliver his new weapons to the world.

And that was when it all fell apart.

He died in the desert and was saved in a cave.

Came back different, new heart and no taste for war, and tried to change everything.

Pepper died for that.

He drinks to forget that, the sight of Obediah's mad Judas lips pressing a kiss to her temple before his metal-hands lifted for that one, awful twist. (Oh, the _sound_, that snap-_crack_, sharp as a gunshot and so final.) And she'd fallen, right there, right at his feet, her eyes doll-dull and lifeless.

When he closes his eyes at night, she's an image inked on the insides of his eyelids, his dead-eyed darling falling boneless onto an old roof, and it's an image no amount of alcohol can erase.

But sometimes, when he's drunk enough, sometimes, he remembers how she'd felt weightless in his arms as they'd spun together, two Floaters dancing in the soft light of that full June moon.

And it's something.

It's something.

xXx

He wakes up easy out of that old, sweet dream to an empty bed and a hangover that's maybe a little worse than usual, but not so awful he can't knock it back with a few pain-tabs and half a gallon of water.

It's a reorientation ritual of a sort: sloughing off of the old dreams, casting aside of the old haunting refrains, letting her go all over again. Standing up to down a few pills to chase away the phantom pains. Shedding clothes and cleaning away yesterday's ghosts.

Midday by the time he wanders down into the kitchen, but he's not bothered: JARVIS, that great watching eye, would have warned him by now if there was any cause for concern.

Bing-bang, just that easy.

Of course, Tony thinks with a sour smile, head's up that the kitchen had been occupied wouldn't have been a bad thing.

"Your machine said he has found no trace of Loki," Thor announces from the kitchen table. He has Odin's distinct and strange speech pattern, Thor does, formal, stiff, every word spoken as if it is gold-weighted. There's more than a hint of thunder in the man's deep voice, accusation in a grumpy rumble.

He's hunched over a coffee mug, a hangover in every hangdog line of his face.

Tony pours himself a cup of fresh-brew and finally turns to his guest. "Yeah, I kinda expected that," he says. "I'm sure he's avoiding the grid. I have people on the ground. Eyes in the slums. If he's there, they'll find him." He leans back on the counter and gives old Thor a long look over the rim of his coffee mug. "So, answer me this, He-Man: your dad's got more people on the ground than I do. And he's got Fury in his hip pocket, so he's got the Law basically at his beck-and-call. Why the hell did he drop this on my doorstep?"

Thor's sudden smile is blue sky chipper, an unexpected patch of bright peeking out between a couple of clouds. "Father told me he did not think he had you fully convinced of his motives," he says as if confiding some big secret. "He told me remind you that a condition of your agreement is that you ask no questions."

"Of course he did," Tony mutters, shoving sharp away from the counter. "Well, in that case, I'm heading down to get some work done. You can watch vids or use the gym or whatever until everybody shows up. JARVIS can show you around."

"That was a compliment," Thor says. "My father does not underestimate you."

"Doesn't trust me, though," Tony points out. "Does he?"

Thor doesn't answer.

Tony is not surprised.

xXx

The Stark Industries machine is running at its usual pristine pace, flawless in progress, so there's no pressing business work to be had this a.m.

Tony doesn't mind: never a shortage of tinkerables and fixerables around the workshop.

He passes his time elbow-deep in one of his father's old Skimmers: the snub-nosed red one, one of the originals. It's a twelve-foot box that looks nothing like the modern-day bullet-shaped Swimmers and everything like an old-world ground-carriage, only with a big hover-plate on bottom instead of wheels. It's a clumsy-looking thing, with all the guts split between a pair of compartments in the front and rear instead of being streamlined underneath.

Ugly in form, but beautiful for its potential.

They were the first of the viable flyables, reliable and undeniable.

First of the flying machines built for Dwellers. Built to give them the illusion of the Sky, of the Floater life.

_Come chase your dreams on the jestream._

Living history, this, and Tony's way of meditating, of working out the anxiety-kinks in his stomach, of busying his hands and freeing his mind to wander.

Easy to get lost in the pieces-parts, lose track of time, of self, of space.

His best inventions, the very best ones, have come when he has his hands in the guts of some other machine, these germs of ideas that begin smelling of dirty grease and metal and end smelling of nothing but clean money.

So he's elbow deep in grease and guts, in bolts and nuts, mind caught up somewhere in the thorny problem Odin dumped on him, in all those questions he's not allowed to ask.

Chasing the schemes through the jetstream.

_Odin, you one-eyed bastard_,_ what's your game_?

"Sir," JARVIS says at some point, "your guests have arrived."

Clatter-clang of a wrench that falls from startled fingers, and Tony bites back a curse as it skins his shin on its way to the floor.

"Sir." JARVIS again: persistent, patient, pleasant.

"Yeah, yeah," Tony mutters, rubbing the rising knob on his leg. "I heard you. Everything ready?"

"Lunch is in the warmer and drinks are in the cooler."

Tony turns away from the old Skimmer, reaches for a rag, and heads up to meet his guests.

xXx

Five faces around a mellow-glowing wooden table, waiting, and they're no strangers to one another.

Tony's not what you'd call a connoisseur of people. He keeps a few in his orbit, a few in his pocket, all in places he needs eyes and ears, but just a few, a happy few, and those few are bound to overlap from time to time.

These five, they've met by twos or threes, but they've never been in the same room together.

Five people ringed around an old wooden table: motley knights of yore, waiting in finger-on-a-hair-trigger-tense silence for their lord to arrive and lead them onto a battlefield.

Tony leans against the doorframe at his right, crosses his arms, and surveys them.

Big Thor, massive Thor, at the center of the table, blond hair pulled back into a loose tail, neat and regal in his red-trimmed shimmering silver shirt and black trousers. Big hands folded on the table. Face calm and complacent, but eyes narrow.

The one outsider in a group of insiders.

At Thor's left is Clint, a slouching presence in baggy blacks. Bow and arrows crossed cool-casual over his shoulders, like he he doesn't notice that he's sitting on them. Bright eyes that don't miss a single thing track around the room, watching, cataloging, assessing.

Shooter's eyes.

Equal parts natural talent and years of training. Clint's been shooting as long as he's been breathing, a product of his upbringing as a vagabond performer in a traveling show, his training as an agent of Law, and his years spent slumming down in the pits with the human scum.

At Clint's left is Tasha: red-headed, doe-eyed, innocent-faced, her skin made pale by the skintight black-on-black she's wearing. All a deception, because she's even deadlier than Barton.

She-assassin, deadliest of the deadly, can legitimately kill you six time before you even hit the ground, and you still wouldn't know you were dead.

Grew up hardscrabble in the back end of beyond: a pimped-out addict's child. She was fucked up, worked over, and used up before she was ten years old, and headed nowhere fast until the day she got tired of being raped and stuck a knife in some john's guts.

She learned fast how to fight for herself, how to kill for herself. She fell in with a street crew and learned every trick and then some, learned until she was better than the best of them.

She's Clint's sometime-lover, and always-partner, and she and Clint have yet to let Tony down in all the years he's been calling on them, whether it's to track down hackers trying to steal StarkTech or Law dogs trying to do the same fucking thing.

Right-side of Thor is Tony's hook into the Law: Steve Rogers.

Steve is a Bright Boy, a sunshine-smiling aw-shucks good guy that Nick Fury – Man of Law – sends out to paste a happy face on what the Law brings down. He's a push-man, a pitch-man, a _shill_: "Hey, everyone, I'm an Ideal Citizen. I follow the Law! I love the Law. I know that the Law is here to protect us. I know that the Law is working only for our own good. So follow along with me. Follow the Law."

They call him Captain America, some half-ironic tribute to a comic book hero from once upon a time. They even shove him into this godawful garish red, white, and blue getup that reminds Tony of what the street girls wear down in the scuzz-pit. They parade him around on the back of a Swimmer like some kind of icon, like he's some kind of fucking hero.

He'd be a sad case if he bought was he was peddling, but Steve's not naïve.

Shovel the shit the Law gives you, be their Bright Boy, and maybe Fury turns his one eye blind to some of the off-the-books looks Steve takes into things every once in a while. For Tony, mostly, but that's another thing the other one-eyed king pretends he doesn't see.

So Steve is Tony's eyes on the inside.

Bruce Banner, at Steve's right, is Tony's eyes on the outside.

Product of a failed science experiment, old Bruce is. Small-statured and dark haired, ordinary to the untrained eye. Brilliant doctor whose life got completely fucked up by a freak radiation experiment that went awry some ten years ago now. One freak accident, and a brilliant nice-guy doctor had a Hulk inside, this giant green monster that took over anytime Bruce got angry.

Destruction at its most mindless, Hulk was, and poor Bruce took the brunt of the fallout. Lost his position at the Central City Science Academy, lost his wife, lost his friends, lost everything.

Wound up on the outskirts of the city, a street doc, tending to the lame and sick, a brilliant doctor reduced to performing street surgery on gunshot victims and administering medication to addicts and tending to the children caught in the crossfire of it all.

Like Clint and Tasha, he works in the places the eyes in the sky don't track, in all the dark corners where people who want to hide can. He has his ear to the ground out there.

Funny thing is, Tony still thinks of him as the old Mean-N-Green, but Banner-man hasn't actually had a Hulk attack in two years, thanks to a daily dose of Vioxycline. VeeCee. Vitamin Chill.

Anger is an impossibility if you're on Vitamin Chill, at least that's what they say, and it must be true if it's kept Doc's big green problem locked away for so long.

So Banner's a fuzz-head, which is a maybe step-up from a buzz-head, but that perma-smile on the good doc's mouth says he doesn't really give a fuck, everything is everything, and la-dee-fuckin'-_da _isn't it all just wonderful, wonderful, _wonnerful_?

Tony's always wondered, because Tony always wonders, what might happen if, one day, the VeeCee got replaced by something else, something maybe like a little sugar pill, without the good doctor knowing.

Wonders, but never has bothered to investigate. It's just a hunch, just a guess, but he figures what'll happen is Hulk. Hulk will happen in a big, unstoppable rave-wave until he can burn off about two years' suppressed rage, and that, friends and neighbors, is a big risk Tony's not willing to take.

Even fuzzed-out and a quarter-bubble off level, he's still useful, still smart, still got his ear pressed to the ground, and Tony's not going to fuck around with that.

So.

Five figures around the table.

And then there's Tony, the man in the iron suit.

The man every pair of eyes in the room turns to watch.

He pushes away from the doorframe, smiles, and says, "Thanks for coming."

xXx

"Yeah, this the big buzz around the CLO," Steve says some thirty minutes later, once they've finished their lunch and Tony's brought them up to speed. CLO – Central Law Office. Nick Fury's den. "The director has everybody except the essentials pulled away on it." He sends Thor a dry look. "Your father really does have a lot of clout."

Thor returns the look. "He has earned it."

There's not a person around this table stupid enough to argue with him on that point, even if 'earned' actually is the wrong word for it.

So Tony, who's sitting between Tasha and Bruce, ignores him and glances over at his two street hounds. "Any joy?"

"Caught a bite, maybe, right before we left to come up here," Tasha says. She has a quiet voice, the kind that never raises in volume. When she gets angry, she gets even quieter, and pity the man stupid enough to be standing next to her when she reaches that point. "Heard something this morning about a new face down at the hostel on Mapes. Didn't really match the description, but..."

"But if this guy's a Shadowman, it's worth checking out," Tony says.

"We're planning to sneak a peek soon as we're done here, boss-man," Barton puts in. He's spinning an arrow, idly, between his forefinger and thumb. "You don't get a lotta time with a Shifter, you know. So maybe if we find this guy, we go after him? Fucker could be in the wind ten seconds after we get the call to you."

"Have you ever gone after a Shadowman?" Steve asks him, frowning. No love lost between them.

"Yeah," Barton says, and his smile is the jagged edge of a busted bottle. "Yeah, four. Caught two. So maybe I know what I'm doing."

Steve smiles, mildly, holds out an empty hand, and says, "I was just asking."

"That's impressive, actually," Bruce says from Steve's other side, all vague smile and half-focused eyes. His words aren't quite slurred, but he sounds like somebody who's just been woken up. "I've heard that's one of the hardest things an agent can do, catching just one."

"Yeah, it is," Barton says. "Especially if they're any good with tech."

"He is," Thor rumbles. "I wish to join you on this 'sneak peek'."

"No." This from Tasha, eyes flickering like light reflecting off a knife. "We work alone."

Thor, to his credit (or maybe his stupidity, Tony isn't sure which), matches her stare for stare. "That was not a request. I have seen many of his faces. If it is him, I will know."

Barton, eagle-eyes, leans back in his chair and drawls, "She said no, Blondie. That means no."

Thor's hand's a fist on the table. "You would attempt to catch him on your own," he thunders, "when you do not know him as I do, have not seen him as I have seen him? Do not be foolish."

"Hey, Floater fuck," Barton says, "just because your daddy's-"

"_Hey_," Tony cuts him off. "_No_."

Barton blink-blinks, pauses, frowns Tony's way. Sullen silence stretches to a snapping point.

Tony says, "He's going with you."

"What-!"

"You're taking him with you and that's the end of it." Tony slouches back, laces his hands together over the arc reactor, looks ice into Clint's boiling-hot eyes. "He can help you. Like he said, he knows this Loki guy – knows what he looks like, knows how he does his thing. It's kind of stupid of you to not make use of that. So do He's not gonna slow you down. Are you big fella?"

Thor lifts his chin, All-Father-in-training arrogant. _Offended_, even. "Of course not!"

"Well, there ya go," Tony tells his hot-eyed street spies.

It's a win-win: the Wonder Twins get an extra set of eyes, and Tony gets the Thunder Head out of the tower and onto the streets. Barrel of laughs right there.

Tasha, always the more reasonable of the two, finally nods and says, "You're right. We could use the extra eyes on the ground."

That's it, but that's enough for Tony. He turns to Steve and Bruce and says, businessman-brisk, "All I really need from you two is for you to keep your ears open. If you hear anything, let me know." Bright Boy and the fuzz-head both nod their understanding.

"We're getting standard rate for this, right?" Clint asks, and Tony tells him sure.

Stark Industries doesn't need human employees to function, but once in a great while its CEO does. He can't expect these people, best of the best at what they do, to work for free, can he?

They wouldn't.

Not for him.  
xXx

There's no joy in Scumville.

Thor and the Wonder Twins strike out.

But they catch wind of another tip, and head off to investigate that.

While they're out doing that, Tony decides to go flying.

xXx

The Iron Man suit, his red and gold armor.

Stupid name for it, probably; there's hardly any iron in it.

Somehow, though, Light Metallic Alloy Man suit just doesn't have the same ring.

Thing is, he died in the desert and he was saved in a cave.

He was saved by a suit he built out of iron.

So no matter what the suit is made of now, no matter what he'll discover to make it out of in the future, it will forever be known as the Iron Man suit.

He's a Floater, is Tony, a man not meant to keep his feet on the Ground.

Oh, he can slot in among the Dwellers well enough when he needs to, but his first love is flying high in that wide-open blue sky.

The suit gives him the freedom.

And the responsibility.

Thing is, there's Law, but that doesn't mean there's justice for all.

Fury's dirty little secret, the one he tries so hard to paste his Bright Boy's face on, is that there's nothing to fear in Central City, that there's plenty of Law to keep everyone safe, and that all criminals are treated as innocent until proven guilty.

Not one word of it is true.

In a world of shifting Shadowmen and walking deadmen and the kingpin that writes the laws of the sky, there's plenty to fear.

There's nowhere near enough agents of Law to keep the peace.

And the expression "there's no justice like Sky justice" isn't just lip service: if you're a Floater, you can get away with things that would earn a Dweller a death sentence.

So maybe, sometimes, while Tony's flying the skies, weaponized and technologized and energized, he looks for ways he can restore some balance. For example-

"Sir," JARVIS breaks in, voice cutting neatly through Tony's musings, "I'm detecting an unusual reading in your immediate vicinity."

"Show me," Tony says. Inside the suit's helmet, the blue-neon display changes to a grid view, wire-framed lines laid out like a map. Couple of buildings nearby shows a speck of green between them, a shapeless energy smear that JARVIS's sensors can't see clear to penetrate.

It's nothing like anyhting Tony's seen before, either: light energy of some kind: bright, but not burning. A heat-less flare seemingly from nowhere.

"I'm going to go check this out," he tells JARVIS. "Stand by."

"Yes, sir."

It's well past sunset by this point, cloudless, and the night below is doing that blaring neon glow again: a screaming riot of color laid over the city like a child's backlit blanket, daylight bright, flittery and jittery and electric as all the signs and and scenes and machines fight to be seen.

Distraction after distraction after distraction, and it's amazing Dwellers ever accomplish anything in Central City.

Tony skirts the edge of a jetstream, steers clear of of a couple Swimmers, and plunges low into the yawning black between a couple of buildings, some impossible little pocket where light apparently fears to tread.

When he gets close enough, his night eyes show the outline of a lone figure slouched indolent against one wall, loose-limbed and relaxed enough that he could be sleeping.

Tony touches down on the ground without a sound, slow and quiet, one absent hand pushing his face shield up.

Takes a step forward. Glass crunches under one booted foot, and he freezes, staring wide-eyed at the figure in front of him.

Hears, distantly, JARVIS send a distress call, but ignores it.

"'Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images,'" a quiet voice murmurs from the dark, smooth like the soft ripples of water over rock in the night, "'where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water.'" Ghost-breath of a sigh.

Overhead a soft white light flares to life.

An unlined face framed by hair black as the night around them turns.

Tony is not sure what he's expecting to find in the eyes – suspicion, maybe, or a case of the deep-down crazies, or just bald anger – but the gaze that latches onto his is sane, calm, clear.

There is warmth in the man's unexpected smile, and he says, "I must say, this is a pleasant surprise. Odin really has outdone himself this time." The voice is deep and rich and velvety-soft, a supple, sumptuous fabric drawn across Tony's skin. "Hello, Mr. Stark. My name is Loki. I believe you're looking for me."

"Uh. Yeah."

It's the best Tony can manage, what with his throat dusty-dry and his tongue a dead thing of the floor of his mouth and jaw muscles slack-loose.

Even in the pale light overhead, it is clear the image on the viewer didn't do this guy justice. He's tall, spare, and elegant as a light-dancer, an air-romancer. Casual-dressed, but in a manner reminiscent of Thor: gold-slashed green shirt, slim black trousers. Slender arms across a narrow chest; something almost fluid in his posture, graceful.

Bright eyes burn across the dark, shot through with intelligence and wicked amusements and hints of something like power.

He looks nothing like a murderer and everything like an artist; a poet or a painter, maybe, but not a thief, not a killer, not a Shadowman.

Which is precisely the point Tony comes back to himself: a Shadowman can be anyone he wants to be.

Suddenly he wishes he'd left the face shield down. Wonders why he lifted it at all. He clears his throat, steps closer. Can't seem to help it: it's like he's being pulled along, one side of a magnet to its opposite.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I am. How...? You know who I am."

"I doubt you'll find a person in ten million who doesn't know who you are," is the dry answer. "However, I am and have been a great admirer of your work. What you've accomplished is breathtaking, truly. Your reactor, your weapons, your grid, the med tech. Everything you've given the world..." The words tail off and Loki chuckles, ducks his head. "Listen to me, prattling on like a silly _child_. My apologies."

Despite himself, despite the bells blaring warnings in his head, Tony laughs too. It _tickles_ him, you might say, the notion that a Technomage is girl-gushing over him. And, yeah, maybe it's a con, maybe it's a game, maybe he's being played, but maybe his ego is just too busy enjoying the shameless stroking to care.

It's not something that happens much these days.

"It's okay," he says. "Prattle away."

"I'm quite finished, thank you," Loki replies in a prim tone that is at complete odds with his lazy slouch. "We haven't much time, in any case. The cheese is on the trap, the mouse has reached for it, and now the bar is about to snap down on its neck."

"Ch-? What? What trap?"

"The one Odin and Thor planned for me. You are the bait, you see, for I have never made secret my appreciation for your accomplishments. It has always been my wish to meet you. They know this. And thus, they have used you to draw me out."

Tony's forehead knots like an old rag, a tight ball of a scowl that actually hurts. "They asked me to find you."

"Knowing, doubtless, that you would also come to help look for me – wearing, I might add, a suit that I could disable with but a thought. You are the bait, but I could not pass up the opportunity."

"I'm flattered," Tony says through an eye-roll. "Stay where you are."

Loki moves away from the wall, all fluid ease in a motion that calls to mind ballroom floors and waltzes.

_A slow dance under a low-hung June moon._

Somewhere above-behind, the low thrum-hum of a an approaching Swimmer.

The cavalry.

Tony's not paying attention to that, though, because it is Loki that has his attention.

In a blink-second there's a quick shift like a secret switch has been thrown and a mask has fallen away from Loki's face. It's nothing overt, nothing obvious, nothing Tony can put a finger on, but it changes Loki's countenance from something open and pleasant to something closed and danger-sharp: shadow-hooded eyes. Down-cut eyebrows, razor's edge of a smirk along the hard line of white-thin lips.

This is the image in the portable: the murderer's face, the madman's face.

Loki approaches, pauses close enough to touch, _towers_. "You must remember, Mr. Stark," he says, and he presses a single finger to the triangle in the middle of Tony's chest, the one protecting his arc reactor, "that what you've been told was filtered through Odin's singular perception. What he said was not the entire story. Did he, by chance, mention that he raised me as his second son?"

The suit's joints are frozen, immobile. Tony swallows. "No. No. And I think I'd remember something like that. I – you know what, I don't even remember seeing anything about Odin having two kids."

Stupid, stupid move, arguing when he doesn't have anywhere to go.

Loki merely nods; if he's offended at all, it doesn't show. "I left when I was fifteen. It was difficult for the family. Most of the records were erased. But if you know where to look, if you ask the right people, you'll find the proof. I would not, however, bother asking Odin. He'll deny me to his dying breath. He will tell you that a Shifter will say or do anything to gain your trust. He'll be right on that, but lying otherwise."

The thrum-hum has become a more pronounced rumble. Tony draws a ragged breath. "What difference does it make? You're a still a killer."

"'Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images.'" A quick upward squint before those fiery greens find Tony again. "There is more than one side to this story, Mr. Stark. As much as I would like to give you mine, I must go. Perhaps I will come to you again. My apologies, but-"

Lightning from a clear sky: an explosive flash of blinding white, and something smashes into Tony's midsection with the approximate force of a wrecking ball dropping into a building.

Tony is launched into the air, dazzle-eyed and dazed, and winds up rushing face first into a brick wall.

There's a quick-flash of agony, a brief-bright flare: a runaway June moon crashing down into him.

And then it's all swallowed up in the blackness.

xXx

_Son of man,  
__You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
__A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  
__And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  
__And the dry stone no sound of water.  
_-T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland."

A/N: I will update this as I take breaks from "To Defy the Stars." Thanks for reading.


	3. The One-Eyed King and His One-Eyed Jack

A/N: More character stuff and more world-building. Some ideas. Not much else. Enjoy.

**3. The One-Eyed King and His One-Eyed Jack**

_Don't ride a shim-sham Skimmer!_

_Ride a whim-wham Swimmer!_

_Don't Skim on the dim team!_

_Come Swim on the jetstream!_

The sloganeers, that's what they say, anyway.

It's what they came up with when it was time to move away from the Skimmers' old-style tech and to move toward the Swimmers' newer-style tech.

Pretty stupid as slogans go, don't you think? Shim-sham Skimmer? Whim-wham Swimmer? What the hell does any of that even _mean_?

This, for reasons unknown and unknowable, is the thought that is uppermost in one Tony Stark's mind as he drifts back into semi-consciousness.

In the back of a Swimmer, no less.

Oh, the irony.

xXx

_...dim team!_

_...jetstream!_

"...nn...fuuuuuuuu..."

"Sounds like he's waking up."

"...uuuuuck me..."

"Oh, ya think, Bright Boy?"

"Barton."

"Rogers."

"Shut _up_," Tony gruff-grunts. "Guys're givin me a headache." He feels the scuffy rumble-tumble of the jetstream above-around, and keeps his eyes closed. "Why're we'n a Swimmer?"

_Ride a whim-wham Swimmer_.

"Because it was handy," Steve, Bright Boy, tells him.

"Don't bitch, boss-man," Barton puts in. "You call, we haul. We obey, you live to fight another day. Simple as that."

Tony's got a retort of some kind brewing, but it gets lost in the shuffle when hands hook under his suit's armpits and drag him up-up-up. He opens his eyes halfway, maybe, and they get seared out by a couple of cosmically bright stars overhead.

Cabin lights, probably, because Swimmers don't have clear-glass roofs, and a squinting second look confirms that.

Swimmer's rear cabin: the elongated, padded rectangle of a coffin, gray and brown. Brown bench seats along either side with a padded gray carpet floor between. Black windows like soulless, sightless, staring eyes along the walls. Cold harsh-white electric lights along the ceiling.

Probably not as ugly as he thinks it is, but with his head pulse-pounding and everything white-bright, he's feeling a mite churlish.

Barton and the Bright Boy are a couple of dark figures hovering in front of him, a couple of black-wearing lumpy bodies with big, round June moon faces.

"You okay?" Steve asks, all earnest concern.

"Fine," he says through the dull-drone in his head. His helmet feels dented-in, pressing against his temple. "The hell happened?"

Quick tick of a look between blue eyes – sky blue and hunter blue – and Steve leans back on his haunches, sets his shield beside him, and says, "We were hoping you could tell us. When we found you, you were on the ground. Nobody around."

Tony lets his head fall back against the bench. "So you didn't see anything at all?" Two negatives, and he breathes out. "I found Loki. Or he found me. I – think he might have been waiting for me."

"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me!" Barton barks. "You mean to tell me that me 'n Tash have been beatin' feet with that big blond Floater fuck forever and you're the one who gets eyes on the Shifter? What kinda fuckin world is _that_?"

"You see him in custody anywhere?" Tony growls back. His suit's internal controls are still red-dead. It's like being inside a steamer, and he's sweaty-slick enough that he imagines he could probably shimmy out of the damned thing without having to hit any of the release points. Doesn't do much for his temper, this. "Then it's the kinda fuckin' world where you don't stop looking, Hawk. Where the hell _is _Thor, anyway? Where's Tasha?"

"She had a thing," Barton says with a shrug. Tony figures that's Clint-speak for 'she's pumping a john for information' or 'she's fucking a john.' Which is probably the same thing.

"Thor is at the CLO with his father," Steve says. "Which is where we're heading."

"Whoa, who, whoa – no." Tony holds up a hand. "No way am I going to Fury's den. I wanna go back to my Tower."

"Do you see either of us at the wheel of this hunk of steel, boss-man?" Barton asks, his eyebrows bow-arches. He takes a seat on the low bench behind him, darts an arrow-flick gaze to the beige cabin door. "We've been blocked and locked. Got no choice."

"Lawman's orders," Steve says, gaze sliding away. "Sorry. Besides, we're almost there."

"So what did he say?" Barton asks. "Loki."

Tony's head throb-throbs away, silvery pains spiking across his skull, little dazzle-flashes in his eyes. "A bullshitter bullshitting a bullshitter about a bullshitter," he finally replies. "I honestly don't know."

"_Huh_?"

"I know this is a stupid question before I ask it, but do either of you remember Odin having two kids?"

"No," Steve says as Barton says, "Like I give enough of a fuck about that Floater scum to-"

"I'll take that as a no," Tony cuts him off. Then, glancing up at Steve: "O, Captain, my Captain, I need you to do some shovel work for me. Dig into Odin. See if you can find any evidence at all of another kid in that family. Living with or maybe related to."

"You really want. Me to dig. Into Odin," Steve almost-haikus, eyebrows somewhere up in his hairline, eyes open wide enough that his eyeballs look like they're about to fall out of his face. "Tonythat'snuts."

Tony snorts, a pained huff-puff, as the Swimmer whim-whams its way toward the CLO. They don't call Steve a Bright Boy for nothing. "I know. Do it anyway."

"Director Fury won't like it."

"Don't be a pussy, Roger-Dodger," Barton says, eyes glinting. He's got an arrow out again, and he's rolling it between his palms, slow. His grin is all teeth again, bright white under the harsh overhead light. "Oh, wait. Forgot. You let 'em whore you out, so, huh, guess y'already kinda _are _one."

Steve's got that aw-shucks good guy thing going for him, but that doesn't mean he's a shrinking violet. Matter of fact, he reacts before Tony, striking out with a right first the size of a brick, and smashing Barton hard enough to send him crashing into the Swimmer's side window, nose gushing like a crushed tomato.

Tony, from his sweat-soaked hunch against the opposite bench, watches Bright Boy wince and look away.

Nobody says a word, and Tony doesn't wonder:

xXx

They'll tell you there's no god left.

The people who write history – the Sky King and his ilk, mostly – say they have done a better job of killing all the gods than any of their anti-religious ancestors ever did: first by vilifying people with any kind of religions belief, and then by not talking about them at all.

They had to, you understand.

Gods-people almost destroyed the world.

The details are a little hazy thirty years later, but what most people who were alive then remember is that all these religious institutions the world over, they started fighting with each other over _everything_.

Hardly anything new, since they've always been fighting over everything, but bit by bit the intellectual and philosophical arguments turned into wars of words, which led to terrorist attacks, which then led to an actual war where religious genocide became the ultimate goal.

Theological and philosophical differences, well, those are nothing new, but when you throw in bombings and shootings and attempted land grabs, when you start killing people by the tens of thousands in the name of your respective deity, well, that's an entirely different kettle of fish.

You can't do that – not without pushback.

The whole thing blew up before anybody really knew what was going on.

To this day, maybe five people on the entire planet know who fired the first shot, but those people are not talking. The history of the last Big War is frustratingly fuzzy, a perpetual puzzle that not even the most persistent info-hunters have been able to piece together.

What everybody knows is gods-people got into a shooting war and soon started slinging Atom-Smasher bombs all across the planet. Those bombs tore holes in Earth's atmosphere, which necessitated the until-then neutral Technomages' intervention. The Technomages got out of control, Odin turned his war-dogs on them, and, well, everybody knows how that turned out, too.

In the after, Odin and the other surviving Sky people decided to remove religion altogether.

It wasn't hard.

Just a matter of reminding people that religion was the reason the world almost burned up. Just a matter of vilifying those believers and their faiths – every faith, everywhere. Just a matter of telling people that the answers to life were _here_, on Earth. Just a matter of quietly shutting down access to information about religion, about the various iteration of gods, about the various holy books.

Of _deleting_ those holy books, those holy names, those religious practices.

Law forbade it and enforced it with executions.

Quietly, you understand, because it would be in poor taste to let it become public news that Law was sanctioning public executions. It became clear soon enough that in this bravest of brave new worlds, best to forget about any and all gods and concentrate on Earthly goings-on. Safer that way.

Oh, there are some gods-people hanging about, quite a number of them if truth were told: these furtive, fugitive people in their tiny cloistered sects, praying their prayers to their invisible gods and saying their graces and performing their religious rituals in the deep underground, where they think prying eyes can't see them.

But Law is Law, especially for Dwellers – which most _are – _so Law does what Law _does_.

They enforce it.

And the Bright Boy, oh, he is _good_ at his job.

Guys like Barton, the street-level specialists and cloak-and-dagger warriors, they think they're the best of the best Law has to offer, but Nick Fury's not stupid enough to hide all his best eggs in that basket.

Stick the Bright Boy in shiny reds and blues and white by day and parade him around as the face of the Ideal Citizen. By night, stick him in black body armor with a white star in the center of his chest and a black mask over his face, hand him a shield with a white star in its center, turn him loose to hunt the gods-people, and watch them fall again and again.

What you have is Nick Fury's best weapon, hidden right there in plain sight.

Gods-people are a danger with their faith in invisible gods and their sins and condemnations and wildly divisive differences of opinion, and it is up to Steve, acting as an Agent of Law and Keeper of Peace, to find them, to stop them.

(He doesn't kill them, just finds them, and then lets the Enforcer execute them – _in nomine patris, _and all – and moves on to the next.)

For the good of all, you understand.

It's done at night, always at night, and nobody's any the wiser for it because in this day and age, it's not uncommon for entire families to just vanish. No word, no trace, no funeral, no eulogy, no questions asked. Has to be that way: last thing anybody needs is some gushing heart getting hold of the story and generating heat for the Law.

People would accept that Law is working in their best interest, maybe, but why take the chance? Why tell people there are those out there who deliberately ignore the Law? Why give religion any kind of traction? Why admit that their efforts to kill all the gods have failed?

Why not just _pretend _gods are dead? There's no afterlife, no afterdeath, no eternal judgment.

All that matters is what a person does in service of Man during said person's lifetime.

Steve might not always believe in Fury's version of Law and justice, but this is one philosophy he's behind (almost everybody is, even Tony, who's seen more good come out of his science and technology than from anything else in his lifetime), so he's not ashamed of the five or so thousand gods-people he's taken down in his lifetime.

(Even the children, but _nobody_ – not even Odin and Fury – ever talks about that. _Ever_.)

Sacrifice of the few to keep the peace for the many, or so they say.

Bright Boy just can't talk about it, so guys like Barton make their joke-jabs and point their mocking fingers like Steve's just some empty-headed poster-child, and it always makes Tony wonder – because Tony always wonders – who would win in a fight between the two of them.

Tony's been out hunting – and fighting – with both, and to this day, he still can't decide.

Always wanted to find out, though.

Better to wonder about that, anyway, than to sit here contemplating the inside of this fucking Swimmer's coffin-like cabin.

_Whim-wham._

xXx

Of course Tony knows about Steve's night job. _Of course_ he does.

That's how they met.

Tony chasing down a pack of thrill-kill kids, and Steve chasing down a pack of gods-people. Ended up in the same warehouse at the same time, and the rest is history.

xXx

CLO.

(It's pronounced_ clo – _like it rhymes with 'glow' – instead of being spelled out. Nobody really knows why, but this city has its share of peccadilloes, same as every other city, and nobody really asks.)

Second-largest tower in Central City, the CLO, a huge gray chrome-and-steel monstrosity that rises like a giant phallic tribute from the pubic thatch of smaller buildings around it.

It's taller than Tony's tower by about two stories, and you bet your ass Tony's bitter about that. But that's Sky rules: nobody's bigger than the Law, which means nobody's building can be bigger than the Law's.

Except Odin's, of course.

Odin's Sky tickler is about five stories taller than Tony's, and considering Odin himself doesn't even _live_ in the damn thing, Tony's even more bitter about that.

Howard Stark did not raise his son to be third-best at anything.

The CLO, though: Central Law Office.

Biggest sham in the city, this huge half-empty building.

But don't tell Nick Fury that.

The one-eyed jack: bald, bad, black-wearing _bastard_.

In a way, a diametric opposite to Odin: white hair, white-wearing, wizen-faced like a kindly grandfather.

Two men cut from the same cloth, though: hard-eyed, confident, cold, calculating, in their blacks and whites.

Huge cavern of an office, this, like something straight out of some neo-noir vid with its dark wooden paneling, deep crimson carpet, huge oak desk, and dim track lights. There are vid monitors on both of the side walls, and the rear wall is one big floor-to-ceiling window, but there are otherwise no modern touches – which tend toward more austere whites, grays, steels, and chromes.

Tony guesses this office is more for Odin's use than Fury's, as Fury strikes Tony as a steel-and-chrome-and-leather kind of guy.

But don't tell Nicky Fury that.

Fury's perched on the corner of his massive desk like a good dog, and Odin's sitting in the old leather chair, looking for all the world like he's a king on his throne.

His son Thor, along with Barton and Rogers, have been banished to the lobby like a pack of children who needed to be kept out of the way so the grownups could talk.

And there's Tony himself, right in front of the pair of them: a sweaty, squinting figure in a red and gold suit. His headache is still pounding away, but in this case, it's almost okay – _almost _– because the pain keeps him steady, keeps him from fidgeting.

"And you say he just disappeared?" Odin finally asks in that oh-so-pleasant, but oh-so-weighted way that makes his words sound gilt-edged.

Tony just manages not to roll his eyes. "That's what I said." He clears his throat. "So he said he knew I was looking for him. Funny, huh?"

Twitch-hitch of a white eyebrow. Different in real life than on the holo – not as sharp, somehow. Still noticeable. "Funny," Odin says. "What did he say, exactly?"

"'I believe you're looking for me.' Also, apparently he's a fan of my tech. Imagine that." Can't resist a little smirk at that, and doesn't miss the muscle that jumps under Sky King's eye. "How'd he know I was looking for him?"

It's Fury, Man of Law, who shifts and says, "We're operating under the assumption he's compromised several communications channels."

Tony glances over and says, benign smile in place, "Including yours?"

Fury's jaw tightens and the one eye narrows. "It's possible."

"Huh. Resourceful, too. Look at that." Tony turns to the seated Odin again, metallic joints creaking and clanking quietly in the tense silence. "So, you have people out looking for this guy-"

"I don't recall saying I had people out looking," Odin cuts him off, tone as silver-sharp as a blade.

"I don't recall being stupid enough to think you wouldn't," Tony retorts. _Slam that button, wham it, jam it, and damn the consequences._ "You don't need my help. You've got all the resources in the city at your disposal. Why am I here? And don't tell me it's the facial rec software, because you know as well as I do that there's no vid grid coverage where he's probably hiding anyway. So what is it?"

Odin leans back in the old leather chair, elbows on the chair's arms, fingers steepled beneath his beard, sky-pale eye narrowed. "I seem to recall telling you not to ask questions," he says at last.

Tony shakes his head. "Well, I don't actually need any favors from you, and you don't have anything else you can offer me, so I don't mind telling you to pound ground, o uncrowned."

Tension like Barton's bowstring drawn back inch by agonizing inch to its breaking point has them all straightening, and the room is suddenly a vacuum – no air whatsoever.

You never insult the Sky King to his face, and oh, man, if looks could kill, Tony would scrap metal and organic goo on the floor right now.

But, trapped deep in the sweaty-hot confines of a dead red-and-gold suit, aching head and all, Tony still finds it in himself to smile straight into Odin's thunderhead face. "So," he says, "why don't you tell me what's really going on here, Odin. Am I the bait? That why you stuck me with your one and only son there?"

A short second of silence, the barest of pauses, before Odin says simply, "Yes."

"Yeah, not happening."

"It's too late now, Stark," Odin says. "Loki set you on the board and put you in play. He won't let you walk away, once that's the case."

"So you'll want to watch your back," Nick Fury says. "Or help us out, and we'll watch it for you."

Tony glances back the closed door. "Give me your Bright Boy until this is over, and you have a deal. And you still owe me that favor, Father Time."

"You said you didn't need any favors from me," Odin says.

"I don't, but I'll take one anyway. And I still want answers. Which you owe me if I'm going to play cheese."

"Give us the facial recognition software," Fury counters.

"You already have it."

"The _patch_, Stark."

Tony huffs a laugh. "You already have one."

A vein pulses in Fury's temple, throb-throb, just like the pounding in Tony's head. Big hands curl like they're just itching to reach out and punch or push, damage or destroy. They're a killer's hands – just like the hands of the men in and just outside of the room – and clearly they haven't lost their taste for blood.

"The software patch, Stark," Odin, patch-eyed himself, says before his pet can lash out.

"Like I said," Tony says, waving them off, "you already have it. As of last night. You're welcome. But, uh, you know, it's pretty unreliable, so I wouldn't expect it to work forever. Also, if it turns out you're using it, oh, I don't know, invade anybody's privacy – more than you already do – it _most definitely_ won't work for long."

"Sure it will," Fury says. He reaches behind him and touches a few keys on the desk's data pad. "New security measures," he says as he does. "You're still the big name in the tech game, Stark, but you're not the only one, not by a long shot. There are some very promising up-and-comers climbing right behind you, and I have to say, they've given us some useful advice about closed systems and internal networking and how to improve our security.

"We're canceling your contract with you effective immediately," he goes on, straightening.

"Didn't know we had one," Tony says, frowning. His thoughts are all pain and waning adrenaline and he's finding it hard to _think_. "Well, okay. You want to trust your security network to a bunch of no-names, be my guest."

Says it half-hoping Fury'll give him a name to work with (wasn't even aware he _had _competition), but Fury just smiles and glances back at Odin, who leans forward in the chair and says, quietly, "There'll be time to nurse your wounded ego later, Stark. Getting back to Loki. You wanted more answers, but there's nothing more I can give you. I have people looking, yes, and Thor is in contact with them. That is why I wanted him with you, and why I wish to leave him with you. If they find anything, they will tell him, and he will tell you."

"There's more than one side to a story," Tony mutters. But: "Fine. I'll take him."

"You can't have Rogers," Fury says. "Your association with him ended with your contract."

_Shim-sham._

_Whim-wham._

Just like that, and Tony really feels like he is on the dim team. Too tired for anger, he just shrugs, a creaky lift of metal shoulders. "Okay."

Fury and Odin exchange a look, dark and light and bemused, and Fury says, "Okay?"

"I didn't really need him, anyway," Tony says. What he _doesn't_ say, what he doesn't remind anybody, is that like everybody else in Central City, Steve can do whatever he wants on his own time. "Are we done?"

Odin rises, smooth and easy for such a beaten-looking old man. He's even taller than Thor, broader, and he towers. "If Loki contacts you again-"

"You'll be the first to know," Tony says over him. His body his fairly humming with the need to get out of here, this low buzz that's radiating out from his arc reactor to his hands and feet. "I'm sure Thor'll see to it."

Thin, blue-eyed smile, and, "I appreciate your help with this, Stark, truly. I apologize for not being more forthright with you about your role before. I wasn't entirely certain you'd be willing to be the, ah, bait."

"Giving guys like him the boot – it's why I put on the suit," Tony says.

"Cute," Fury puts in from his perch. His teeth are startlingly white when he grins.

"Hmm," Odin says, glancing over at him. "There's no need for mockery, Fury. If more of our citizens had the same kind of public spirit Stark has, then we would have the crime problems we do." He turns to offer Tony a grandfatherly smile – the kind that makes a tickling bead of sweat trickle down Tony's back, the kind that sets Tony's own teeth on edge, the kind that makes him _itch_. "I'll send Thor along as soon as I've had a chance to speak with him. But, please, he is my only son, Stark. Do be careful. And send him in on your way out."

No particular emphasis on the phrase 'my only son', so Tony's careful not to react much beyond a herky-jerky nod and a thin smile as he turns to stump out of the room.

"Send Rogers in, too," Fury calls after him. "Goodbye, Stark."

"Yeah," Tony says.

As he pushes through the big wooden door with its ornate gold handle, all Tony do is wonder what the hell just happened.

xXx

"So?" Barton asks, as soon as Thor and Steve disappear into the office.

Tony rubs his aching head. "We have a problem."

"What, with Loki?"

"No," Tony says. "No, it's a lot bigger than that. Look, I need to go get out of this fucking suit, and you need to get back down to your woman. Stay handy, though. I'm gonna send Thunderdunce your way in the morning. Keep him busy, would you?"

Eyes like a couple of arrow-points home in on him. "What's the problem?"

"That," Tony says, pushing away from the wall, "is what I'm gonna try to find out."

xXx

Another unpleasant Swimmer ride, one shed suit, a long shower, two strong pain-tabs, and four hours' dreamless sleep, and Tony is feeling like a human being again.

Tasha shows up early and drags a reluctant Thor out the door, back down into the bowels of Central City, off to chase down a rumor and a shadow.

As soon as they're gone, Tony sets his coffee mug down and heads to his lab, that giant open square of a room that makes Odin's ridiculous neo-noir office seem tiny and stuffy. It's all neat lines, with the various models of his Iron Man suit on one end, half a dozen Skimmers on the other, and a giant white-lighted workbench in the middle. Neon blues and greens hover in the air everywhere: Stark Industries' production statistics scrolling in real time along the ceiling, metrics from the suits projected nearby, his Tower security grid hovering over the table, half-finished projects on various carts and benches around the edges of the room, tools scattered hither and yon.

Comforting in its controlled chaos.

"JARVIS," Tony says as he strolls over to check out his suit, "we haven't had any contracts cancel on us lately, have we?"

"Aside from our contract with the Central Law Office, no," JARVIS replies, smooth-voiced. "Are you expecting them to, sir?"

"Let's just assume I am. That news made it out yet? And any info on who got the contract?"

"The answer to both is no, sir. If I might ask, sir, why are we losing contracts?"

Tony snorts as he squints at the neon blue power display on his suit's charger. Full and holding steady. "Was this just drained?"

"Yes, sir. Will I be needing to prepare a statement of apology? Arranging to having flowers delivered anywhere? Shall I ready the accounts for a withdrawal again?"

"I don't like what you're implying, JARVIS," Tony says, chuckling. He straightens and plucks the dented helmet off the stand. He wanders back to his workbench, shoves aside a few old Skimmer parts and a few tools. "Did you piss somebody off while I was gone last night?"

"_Me_, sir?"

"Well, I know I didn't. So if you think you need to prepare a statement of apology, I can only guess you have a guilty conscience."

"That's impossible, sir." Somehow, some way, the unemotional AI sounds like he's grinning. "And so, I should add, are you."

"Thanks," Tony says, smirking down at his hands. "Although I'm offended that you think I might have done something to cost us a contract. I would never."

"Never, sir? Need I remind you of the time you-"

"No, you don't. You don't need to do any of that. We need to find out who the hell got that contract. They didn't get all the back doors to the grid closed, did they?" Tony sets his helmet on the vise, grabs a mallet, and begins to tap out the worst of the dents – the deep one, over the temple.

"All but one, sir," JARVIS says.

"Left it open on purpose, probably." Steady-handed, not bothered. "Stay away from it. Did I have any messages?"

"One. From Captain Rogers. Encrypted. It came while you were asleep."

Tap-whap, and at last the dent's smooth enough. "Play it."

Steve's face on the vid screens, pinched-pale, bright blue eyes burning with the anger Tony hadn't been able to summon the night before. "Anything you need, Tony," Steve says, "anything _at all _you just let me know. I'll let you know what I dig up. I'll be in touch when I can."

Just that, and Tony grins down over his work.

"You have a call, sir," JARVIS informs him before he has a chance to get much further in his gloating. "Dr. Banner. Audio channel only."

Tony picks up the helmet again and tips it lightward, examining the faceplate. "Doc!" he says when he hears the line connect. "What's the word on the street?"

As always there's a half-second pause before Banner-man answers. It's like words have to penetrate a layer of wool before they reach his brain and his response has to travel through that same fuzz-filter.

Vee fuckin' Cee.

"Mm, Tony, hi. How are you?"

"Good, fine, great. Well. Concussed, but that's hardly anything new."

"Oh. Yeah. Clint told me that this morning. He stopped by." There's a gaping pause, and Tony fiddles with the faceplate while he waits. "Are you all right?" Bruce finally asks.

"Yeah. So? What's going on?"

"Hmm? Oh! I met a woman at the clinic just a little while ago."

Another of those stretching silences, and Tony tap-taps the file on his workbench. Finally, he prompts, "So did you just call me to tell me you got laid or something, Bruce?"

Because that really _would_ be something, considering Vee Cee's other nicknames: 'dead head' or 'cock block,' since it supposedly made not only anger but basically anything requiring passion an impossibility.

"No, no," Bruce finally says, laughing-voiced. "Of course not. She was very nice, though. And tall."

"Everybody's tall to you, Bruce," Tony points out. Hypocritically, of course, but he's still taller than the diminutive doctor. He sets the faceplate aside, sits back on the stool, laces his hands together over his arc reactor. Thumb-drum like a heartbeat to help him think. "Okay. So you met a woman. And...?"

_Fuzz-heads._

"Oh! It was strange. She asked me if I knew you, and when I said I did, she asked me to give you a message. I wrote it down. It says 'CLO security – Hammer. Reinforce your firewalls. Ask other family.' Any idea what it means?"

Tony ignores that for a moment. "What did she look like?"

Again that pause. "I didn't get a very good look at her. She was very tall. Thin. Dark hair and I think blue eyes. Maybe green. Black or dark blue dress, I think. So?"

Not unheard-of, a gender-bender Shadowman, Tony muses.

"So, I think there's a chance you might have met Loki," he says. "Don't go anywhere, all right? I'm on my way."

Just as soon as he reinforces his fucking firewalls.

Whim-fucking-_wham_.

xXx

A/N: Thanks for reading.

Side note, haven't even started the next chapter of "To Defy the Stars" yet. Thanks to a recent promotion at work and a big project, I've been working 60+ hours a week for the past three or so weeks. Should settle down soon and hopefully will get back on track there. Sorry about the delay and thanks for your patience,


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